Deconstruction and Politics

This course will explore the uneasy relationship between deconstruction and politics. We will begin the course by familiarizing ourselves with Jacques Derrida's deconstuctive method, and continue by reading his work on issues of justice, law, cosmopolitanism, ethics, and the right to philosophy. The rest of the course will be spent engaging with various contemporaries of Derrida for whom his work in deconstruction and political philosophy has been important: Drucilla Cornell, Giorgio Agamben, Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari.